#43 Better Handling of Multiple Authors

[Danny Weltman]

This is pretty easy to manually remedy so it's not a big deal, but it would be nice if by default Hypernomicon handled multiple authors better:

1) The search key by default just uses the name of the first author. Preferred behavior: "X and Y year" where X is one author and Y is the other (and so on for multiple authors).

2) The argument creation window by default just uses the name of the first author. Preferred behavior as above.

There might be other places where I would want multiple authors to be handled better but I haven't run into them yet.

[Stephen Mann]

Seconding this. I would like to automatically generate several default search keys. Here for example are the rules I would use:

• Single author: Smith 1996; Smith (1996); (Smith 1996); (Smith, 1996)
• Two authors: Smith & Jones 1997; Smith and Jones 1997; Smith & Jones (1997); Smith and Jones (1997); (Smith & Jones 1997); (Smith and Jones 1997); (Smith & Jones, 1997); (Smith and Jones, 1997)
• More than two authors: Smith et al 1998; Smith et al. 1998; Smith et al (1998); Smith et al. (1998); (Smith et al 1998); (Smith et al. 1998); (Smith et al, 1998); (Smith et al., 1998)

Obviously it's best practice to only use one of these forms when citing within Hypernomicon. But there are times when you want to cite with and without parentheses. And there are times when you want to quote text, and that text contains a citation, and you want the in-quote citation to match your search key with a minimum of editing. Auto-generating search keys based on user-defined rules would be very helpful here.

Can rules like this be set up in a similar way to the "Work File Naming" section of the Settings?

[Jason Winning]

Options to define the formatting of work search keys in settings sounds like a good idea. Question: is the flexibility needed more for what you are writing yourself, or because you are copy/pasting text from other places that includes inline citations? Another idea I've had is, when you are writing the description text for a record, there could be a toolbar button and/or key combination that would allow you to select a work in a popup and then insert the search key at the cursor. Then there would at least be less of a need to remember what the search key for the work is.

Being able to select which authors are included in the name of an argument also sounds like a good idea. I will prioritize these enhancements.

[Stephen Mann]

"is the flexibility needed more for what you are writing yourself, or because you are copy/pasting text from other places that includes inline citations?" Primarily for what I'm writing myself, but I have pasted in quotes once or twice that contain almost-matching keys that I've had to edit.

Your second idea would also be useful, especially as the number of work records grows. Currently my database is quite small, but as I add more works (and especially more works from the same authors) I would need an efficient solution to selecting the right key.

[Jason Winning]

I created a new ticket for the idea of a popup to insert search key text of a record. The rest of the ideas in this thread have been implemented and will be in the next release. You will need to go into Settings and select the Work Search Key Generation page. Then you can customize how search keys are generated. You can have it generate multiple keys, and for each of these, configure the formatting, whether to show multiple author names, etc. Argument name suggestions can also be configured to include multiple authors (ticket 45).

You will probably want at least one of the keys to be single-author because that one will be used when displaying key work links.

[Stephen Mann]

Thanks Jason!